Well?

I can only assume that Ryan has been busy with his personal hygiene issues (haircuts, tanning, make-up and fashion expressions) and that is the reason why he hasn't commented on my initial submission of evidence that the New Deal worked more than it failed.

So, until such time as Ryan is ready to take up that debate again, let's discuss something that has been on my mind a lot lately... Afghanistan.

Frankly, even though I questioned the "how and when" of our invasion of Iraq, I was never really concerned with the prospects of our ability to WIN in Iraq. For the 25+ years before our invasion, Iraq was a basically secular society forced to integrate (to some degree) as a "national whole" through the strength of its dictatorial government. The people living there now consider themselves Iraqi (with the possible exception of the Kurds, but that isn't a foregone conclusion either) and understand the concept of "Iraq" well enough to manage a national government without someone like Saddam looming over them.

However, there is no REAL historical basis for an integrated and homogeneous Afghanistan, and that leads me to question our strategy and strategic goals in Afghanistan. Consider this:

In the nine years that the Soviets were there, they cycled through more than 600,000 well-trained and well-supplied troops. At the height of their occupation, they had four reinforced combat divisions based within Afghanistan, and another four based along the bordering Soviet republics. These troops faced a force of insurgents that could (at best) hope to put 10k men into the field at any ONE time, but never with a solid degree of command and control within their ranks. In fact, it is now estimated that of all the insurgents that fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, there was a 55% chance that no three of them spoke the same language at any one time.

The Soviet goal was to prop-up and support the communist regime in Kabul against radical Islamic elements within the country that had the free support of both the US and Europe AND Iran and Pakistan. The communists had as much as declared war on Islam as they had on the insurgents, and thus had compounded their problem by a complete order of magnitude.

OUR stated goal is to end the insurgency and to help build and support a democratic representative government that can, in time, work to eliminate the crime and corruption of the nation through its own organs of administration and control.

My question... is OUR goal any more realistic and achievable than the Soviet's goal was anywhere between 1980 and 1989? This is a nation where the ONLY examples of a strong central government stem from "colonial" powers exercising control within Afghanistan from outside of it... and this is not something we want to emulate, I think.

As Baddboy recently pointed out, the new "surge" in Afghanistan is on, with Obama's blessing. Who here thinks that Obama's policies will show improvement in the country, even given the entire span of his first term? Can he now (if he deems it prudent) change our conditions for victory, and orchestrate a withdrawl before his next run? Are an additional 30,000 US troops enough to tip the balance of power and control in that nation in favor of Coalition forces... understanding that even with the "surge" the Coalition is STILL less than half of the in-country troop strength that the Soviets had in 1988 (115,000)?